News/Canada

Much of Ontario and southwestern Quebec will continue to bake in high temperatures on Monday and Tuesday as a heat dome lingers over the region.Environment Canada issued a heat warning for the area on Saturday, saying hot and humid conditions will likely continue until Wednesday. The dangerously high temperatures are expected to affect communities from southwestern Ontario and north to Sudbury and Timmins.In Quebec, the hottest temperatures are expected to be felt from Montreal to Shawinigan and north to Abitibi.Environment Canada meteorologist Julien Pellerin said he expects Ontario and Quebec to hit their peak daytime highs on Monday and Tuesday with temperatures rising above 30 C, and the humidex making it feel more like 40 to 45 C, depending on the region."It won't last very long," he ...

The video call is grainy, but it's crystal clear what the person on the phone is trying to sell: illicit drugs, packaged and ready to be shipped to Canada. The seller, who goes by the name Kim, says he sells cocaine, methamphetamine, MDMA and nitazenes, a powerful class of synthetic opioids most people have never heard of — but which can be up to 43 times more powerful than fentanyl."It can kill people, right? So, I just want to make sure that you know that," the CBC journalist asks in a secretly recorded phone call."That is the game," the seller replies.The seller is one of the 14 people the CBC's visual investigation unit spoke to in text messages and phone calls after finding them through ads posted by users on major social media platforms such as LinkedIn, X and Reddit and e-commerce w...

The Federal Court of Appeal has ruled that Health Canada's refusal to allow exemptions for health-care workers to use psilocybin as part of their experiential training was unreasonable.Wednesday's decision was the result of an appeal of a 2022 judicial review application in a case involving 96 health-care practitioners who sought an exemption to legally use dried hallucinogenic mushrooms as part of what is known as experiential training.The initial application for exemption was filed under the name of Jeff Toth, a Nova Scotia nurse practitioner.Health Canada's refusal of the health-care workers' requests for exemptions has been sent back to Health Minister Marjorie Michel for redetermination.Jeff Toth is a Nova Scotia registered nurse and advocate for psilocybin treatment. He is one of 96 ...

This First Person column is the experience of Jennifer LoveGrove, who lives in Toronto. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.When I got home from work, there were packages piled at my door. My partner was on his way to my place. There wasn't time to open them, to try on the new outfits, to post another thrift haul on Instagram. Worse, I couldn't admit I'd bought something else — something surely perfect this time! — despite all the neglected outfits bursting from my closet. Cringing, I shoved the packages under the couch and out of sight.That's when I knew I had a problem, one more embarrassing than dangerous. It happened gradually, while wearing ratty sweatpants, during the years between the pandemic and turning 50. I had become addicted to shopping.I'...

This First Person column is the experience of Luke Galati, who lives in Toronto. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ. The psychiatric ward is a place no one wants to be. But it's a place you might need to be at some point if you live with a mental health condition. There's nothing shameful about admitting that sometimes you need help. In 2023, I spent three months at a hospital in downtown Toronto. I live with bipolar 1 disorder. The best way to explain what I've gone through when I'm unwell is that I feel the highs more than the lows of others who might have depression. I've gone through bouts of mania, where I lose touch with reality. I think that people who love me are out to get me. I act irrationally. But inside my mind, my world makes total sense...

Richard Anderson holds a photo of himself and his brother Bruce as children. In 2021, Bruce died of a suspected overdose while in a drug treatment centre in Kelowna, B.C. (Michelle Mac Donald)This First Person column is written by Richard Anderson, who lives in Silver Creek, B.C. For more information about First Person stories, see the FAQ.I received the phone call early one morning and knew right away that it would not be an enjoyable conversation. My dad and I would talk on a certain day at a certain time, and this was not that day. We said good mornings, then my dad told me that my younger brother, Bruce, had passed away. All I remember is breaking down crying like I have never cried in my entire life. I pulled myself together long enough to ask my dad what happened, and he told me my ...

Nurse Leslie Warner will never forget being taken to her local RCMP detachment in Fernie, B.C., in 2022 and charged in a social security fraud operating out of Alberta.She says she was fingerprinted and had her mug shot taken."I was like: 'Oh my God, this is my identity theft,'" Warner recalls telling police. "I did not do this."The fraud charges were dropped soon after she explained that an imposter had been using her identity since 2020, when someone hacked into her Canada Revenue Agency account and filed a bogus return in Alberta that stated tax preparation company H&R Block was her new "authorized representative."But Warner had never authorized H&R Block to file her taxes.Warner said she has been trying for years to understand how her identity — and at times her life — came to ...

This First Person article is the experience of Scott MacMillan, who lives in Dumfries, N.B. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ. I watched the plane disappear into the sky, carrying my 15-month-old daughter to a hospital where her life could hopefully be saved. Hours earlier, we were in the emergency room in Fredericton, surrounded by sombre nurses. Doctors were attempting to drill into Rosemary's bone marrow to get fluids into her tiny body. The on-call specialist was hours away. The doctor told us our child was in diabetic ketoacidosis. That meant her pancreas wasn't producing enough insulin and her body was shutting down. This was 2022, so pandemic protocols were broken to let me into the hospital as this might have been goodbye. Rosemary was so str...

This First Person column is by Eyasu Yakob, who is a nursing student in Edmonton. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ. I began nursing school in 2021 at the University of Alberta during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across Canada, growing attention was being raised around the shortage of nurses as many health-care workers were reporting burnout. I wanted to be part of the solution. I was inspired to join the profession by my father, who worked as a nurse in Ethiopia before immigrating to Canada. Like many internationally educated health-care professionals, he faced barriers in having his foreign nursing credentials recognized in Canada. Instead, he worked multiple precarious, low-wage jobs to support our family. Pursuing nursing allowed me to carry on his leg...

This First Person column is by Eyasu Yakob, who is a nursing student in Edmonton. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ. I began nursing school in 2021 at the University of Alberta during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across Canada, growing attention was being raised around the shortage of nurses as many health-care workers were reporting burnout. I wanted to be part of the solution. I was inspired to join the profession by my father, who worked as a nurse in Ethiopia before immigrating to Canada. Like many internationally educated health-care professionals, he faced barriers in having his foreign nursing credentials recognized in Canada. Instead, he worked multiple precarious, low-wage jobs to support our family. Pursuing nursing allowed me to carry on his leg...